campos and we're joined by our clerk, linda wong and we would like to acknowledge the staff at sfgovtv who record our meetings and make the transcript as valuable and makenize jesse larson and mike freeman. >> make sure to silence all cell phones and complete speaker cards and documented to be individualed as part of the file should submitted to the clerk. >> thank you, madame clerk. can you please call item no. 1. >> ordinance amending the health code by requiring 1, the department of public health to provide written information outlining the rights and riresponsibilities of tenants, property owners and pest control operators regarding the prevention and treatment of bedbug infestations. 2, dph to develop a training curriculum on bedbug abatement. 3, owners to respond to bedbug infestation complaints. 4, property owners to disclose

bedbug infestation history for the previous two years. 5, the department of public health to collect and publish bedbug data on a quarterly basis. 6, establishing enforcement procedures and 7, making environmental findings. >> thank you. colleagues, one of the first thing issues did when i joined the board of supervisors was to call a hearing on bedbugs in the city and county of san francisco. prior to that hearing actually a group of many of our residents from neighborhoods, chinatown and south of market and the tenderloin had been convening meetings fore over a year to discuss what we could do about the citywide epidemic that has been plaguing our neighborhoods. through the work group this legislation came forwards a series of recommendations on what we could do to better abate bedbugs and the bedbug abatement issue here in san

francisco. this legislation will address three primary issues. the first of course is to actually collect data on bedbug abatement. so to require pest control operators to report to the department of public health on bedbug abatements and to have disclosures and create better information by the city and county of san francisco for tenants, our operators and for our property owners. so i wanted to call up two individuals who have been working very steadily on this project. mr. vining and miss chung. [ applause ] actually before i do that i wanted to give my colleagues an opportunity to speak, if any. do you want to recognize that supervisor david campos is a co-sponsor, along with supervisor david chiu. go ahead. >> good afternoon.

thank you for this opportunity to speak today. i just wanted to sort of start off by thanking supervisor kim for supporting this important legislation and thanks to the supervisors who co-sponsored as well. i wanted to thank the members of the bedbug working group who put a lot of time and effort into this, but the main people i wanted to thank are a lot of people here behind me. that is the tenants who have come out to tell their stories and tenants ho have come out to our bedbug working group meetings to make sure that we're getting it right and the input that we're giving to the city and county is the input that reflects what tenants really feel and the experiences that they are going through and some of the solutions that they have come up to make this process work better. my name is josh vining. i'm a community organization with the sro collaborative at dolores street services. dolores street and the sro

collaborative realized that tenants were confused and that landlords were confused and people weren't quite sure what their responsibilities were and their role in getting rid of bedbug infestations. so we started to meet in the mission just to start of make that clear who was responsible for. what and we started to identify some gaps that were in the system. and when we looked at what was happening in other parts of city and talked to some of our other community advocate groups we found there was confusion there as well. so to identify some of the gaps that this were and to see what sort of recommendations we could put forth as suggestions for city policy. and sense then we have been working closely with the department of public health and

have been giving sort of our suggestions on how they could -- sort of our suggestions on how they can incorporate some of the ideas no their own polices and procedures. and the department of public health has put out their directors' rules and regulations for control of bedbugs of it's a new document and it went into effect july 1st of this year. i would just like to say that we're very excited about that document and we think it makes a lot of important changes and clarifies the roles and responsibilitis is that tenants, pest control operators have in this process and we're interested in going forward and trying to evaluate how well that process works in talking with them in the future. not all of the recommendations of the bedbug working group were able to be adopted by the department of public health. and so we're really excited about this legislationings that does some of the things that

the department of public health just cannot do and it's outside of their jurisdiction. so we're really excited about this today. we think that the legislation is beneficial for everyone. we don't see it as being very controversial at all and we think it's commonsense solutions to bedbugs and we're looking forward to the full board vote. and we're hope to get get a unanimous vote in favor of this legislation >> thank you. >> thanks. my name is tina chung and i'm a community advocate. we have folk b folks from the mission, chinatown, tenderloin throughout the city committed to improving education and the treatment and abatement of bedbugs. many of us when we have been convening we have met with a

lot of tenants and many of us are front line staff, really, having worked with a lot of tenants who have firsthand experience on the trauma, the frustration and anxiety that come with bed bing festation. it can affect anyone. it doesn't matter how old you are or how rich or how poor you are. supervisor kim we really wanted to applaud you for supporting this legislation from the very begining that would improve the knowledge and awareness of bedbugs in the city and helping demystify who get bedbugs and to have written rules and responsibilities for not just tenants, but landlords and pest control operators. so we think that having clearer instructions would make the experience of our tenants that

we serve much better since property management would have a clear understanding of what to do, what to expect what infestations do occur. so nobody is caught surprised. it would mean complaints are taken more seriously and property owners and landlords would have to investigate complaints and disclose two years history upon tenant request. it would provide tenants an opportunity to be informed renters and more vigilant of their surroundings. they are knowledgeable third party that can make a determination and monitor such nuances and requiring are the pest control operators to report to dph and making the information public will be helpful for the city to gather data that really underreported currently. highly underreported, public health concern and our hope in doing so is in the future this is just the first step. more funding will be available to meet the gaps in social

services as we have talked about, resources necessary for really successful reradication of bedbugs. social services are able to help landlords facilitate a dialogue and process for tenant cooperation and collaboration. so the passage of this legislation is crucial and an important step in curtailing the infestation rate in the city. the groups here today and our allies we urge the board of supervisors to support the proposed legislation and we thank you. >> thank you, miss chung. >> we have the department of public health here as well and our office has been working closely with the department along with residents and advocates on this policy. thank you for being here. >> thank you. my name is karen cohen. i am a program manager in the san francisco public health department. i have certainly been working closely with the bedbug working group and advocates here and supervisor kim's office.

and that has started with my role in coordinating the revision of our department's rules -- directors rules and regulations for bedbug prevention and control. we had stakeholder meetings and public comment and public hearings and all of those were wrapped up into our new regthat has been mentioned effective july 1st. since that time i have been working with the advocates who are speaking here today to increase public awareness. as an example -- there we go. we have been collaborating on an interior bus placard advertising at muni that will be out in three different languages. the emphasis is that bedbugs don't discriminate and what you can do to look for bugs and if

your property manager or landlord doesn't respond you should be calling 311. we have communicated with the government library communication center so hard copies will be available at their [tk-efpg/]s and our website is listed for those who use the internet. the rule that the ordinance that has been added today by introductions by supervisor kim is very important, because our current legislative authority doesn't go beyond making specific buildings habitable and by adding this ordinance we would have the authority to do surveillance and to do perhaps additional certification of how the pest operators are working and to help property owners comply with their disclosure requirements. there is one -- so basically as amended for today's introduction, the department is in support. there is one section that i

only saw just now. and i need to comment on that section. it's section 624. and this is about review and amendment of the rules and regulations for the prevention and treatment of bedbug infetchation. generally speak what this section is doing is asking for our department to have a every two-year public process, where we can update the rules and regulations. so from 2008-2012 was a four-year period. this definitely would improve the time span, but i would request instead of health commission we would say "the department." because in our current process of being allowed and authorized to do rules and regulations does not go through the commission. we included the commission, you know, because it's of importance to them to know what is going on. but it's not a requirement for the commission to be the authorizing or approving agency in terms of amending the rule

and reg. so i would suggest that it would be adequate to say "the department shall conduct these public processes." in that section. i can talk to the attorney afterwards about that. >> great. i see where you are at. i haven't introduced an amendment yet. >> they do mention in a, b and c things about the commission and i think you could easily substitute "the department." because it's already our authority to do this. >> okay. >> and then i had other information about hotels and violations and i would like to emphasize the website because we're talking about that in the ordinance. there is a goal to have a training curriculum and we have begun in terms of having an outline about what a start curriculum would look like. this is on the sf environmental health.org when you look up the

bedbug web page it's one of the attachments that includes what are beg bugs that look like bedbugs, but aren't them? so they are training materials and there they are. i think the only other thing to mention about this legislation is that it would require an additional inspector in terms of the certification required after violations. and that could be accommodated either by a salary ordinance request next fiscal year or temporarily or long-term reassigning existing staff and deprioritizing other activities. >> thank you so much, miss cohen. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> i do want to thank miss cohen and doctor bachi for

working with our groups and recognize the department of building inspection who gave us feedback on this legislation as well. i have been notified by the clerk that we have an overflow room, room 250 and if you are here for another item and would like to give up your seat for folkses here at this item, the sheriff does not allow us to have people standing in the room. you will be able to watch the hearing and come back in for your item when that is up. i have just distributed amendments that i would like to introduce after public comment. to my colleagues i just want to let you know briefly summarily what those amendments are. one was the one that miss kahn just mentioned section 624 and that is the information provided to tenants, landlords and pest control operators will be revised by dph every two years. the amendments also clearly and

explicitly include tenants, as a responsible party in the abatement of the bugs and clarified the disclosure form does not apply to tourist hotels and realigned the inspection of the unit to the standards of the directors rules and regulations and changed the collection of our pco data, pest control operator data by census rather than zip code and the review by the department every two years for revision. these amendments came up with follow-up meetings with the hotel council and our apartment owners as well, who gave us feedback. so i'm seeing no further comments or questions from colleagues at this time. i will open it up for public comment. i do have a number of cards for the item and i will call up the first five speakers. [ reading speakers' names ] so

please just line up and come up. two minutes. thank you. thank you for being here. >> good afternoon. my name is ernestine waters weis and i walk up one day to blood-stained sheets and a sofa bed and my first reaction was am i bleeding? the shock was awful. as a victim i suffered extreme disruption of my life. had to vacate my apartment for a week, causing great inconvenience in order for management to rip out carpeting and drapes and destroy my clothes. i had to destroy the clothes that i wore. the so-called security that they had in their apartment

didn't do their job and they stole several of my possessions. it was just horrifying. the whole key to this is prevention. this is simultaneous to your passing 41a amendment about conversion of apartments in residential buildings. my landlord is the worst violator of all of these rules. so 41a should have included banning corporate rentals. this is the cause of bedbug infestations that i suffered and many other people have suffered. this should not be allowed. why was it left out of legislation? it has no teeth. you have got go back to the drawing board and put in that they have to ban corporate rentals in apartment buildings. this is very, very important

and it's the key to everything. enough of the violations of the slum lords. i thrived 25 years and never had a problem until the hotel people came in and out. we don't know who is living next door to us and had a they are about, et cetera. thank you. >> thank you, miss weis. >> we doing translation, so four minutes. >> if you have translations, it's four minutes. >> translator: as i mention in english i live in the senior building affordable housing in russian hill. it's very beautiful.

[tr*-frpblts/] >> translator: we had a recent outbreak and we didn't think it could happen to us.

>> translator: so our seniors, i have seen my neighbors, they can't eat or sleep. bites everywhere, all over their bodies and some infections. you know, the thing is that our seniors are very

self-sufficient and their kids are not always around to take care of eh them and they have been enduring a lot of suffering. they can't move items in their room and they don't really know what to do. i also want to add that there really should be -- i hope there would be more data collection. i support that and funding of services to help the seniors. >> translator: so ipt want to thank you and close by saying really to think about the

single, the frail elderly and the challenge that they face in bed bug mitigation and treatment and also that we support -- i support that there is the data, the findings and processings to make this process much better for everyone. thank you. >> thank you. [ applause ]

>> translator: good afternoon, supervisors, my name -- my family and i live on stockton street in clinton. recently when we have bud bug they are confused what to do. none of them spoke english and did not know who to turn to besides property management. they did nothing. they threw out all of their belongings. i support supervisor kim's proposed legislation because it

would provide a curriculum for property manners to know messengers managers to know what to do -- [speaker not understood] thank you. >> thank you; >> hi. >> translator: supervisor, my name is bing long tam and live in chinatown. also my father-in-law is in

chinatown sro, too. my father-in-law's building had this bed bug infestation. when he goes to bed, all the bed bugs come out at night. so he got bitten pretty badly all over the neck, the head. he reported to the manager.

the manager just did a real routine thing about the bed bugs. so my father-in-law went to chinatown cdc for help. so that was brought to the attention of the health department.

so he couldn't even sleep well at night. so we are really hopeful that the legislation will help people to understand how they are treated and get better. we are living in a pretty bad situation once you have bed bugs. so we hope that we could get this legislation done really fast, so things will get better for us.